I like No. 5 & 6 best, No. 3 having some potential. In all pictures the lighting is not right for me.
No.3 would have been helped by a fill flash (with a diffuser as was said). I like the pose here, but would have cropped the bar in the upper left corner and perhaps tried to use the horizontal bar to separate the sky from the rest of the background.

In No.5 your model seems to be a bit out of focus, judging by the books in the shelves. Again, a bit more light on the model would have helped and straightening the shot as well.

In No.6 the blown lights are distracting, this could have been a nice geometrical feature of the shot otherwise. Her pose and smile is really nice here and with a fill flash this could have been a great shot. Again the picture is leaning a bit.

Just my two cents,
Prieni

Tyr, I think you're making it worse....

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

So if you use a Mac and a Pentax, does that make you a genius?

I'll probably never know as I was pulled to the dark side a long time ago...

On the USM, I usually use a radius of 0.5 for the original size, radius 0.4 for the smaller ones. Threshold usually 2 or 3, around 100 %.
If you have a lot of detail in a pic I copy the background, apply the USM to that layer and copy this layer anew. One of the layers I set to layer mode "lighten", the other one to "darken". The opacitiy of the "lighten" most often needs some scaling back.

As you see, there are many different methods that people use and that give similar results.

BTW, I remember that Matt created some Photoshop actions for sharpening. I sometimes resort to these for difficult pictures.

Prieni

Nice shot, lovely colours and good composition. With a tripod and aperture a bit more closed it would have been even closer to perfection.

By all means do show the other ones...

Prieni

The rose shot is really great. Very delicate and the drops add appeal. I'm with John on the cropping, it sometimes helps also to not have the flower in the center of the picture. The black background does help, but in shot #3 it leaves the flower awkwardly suspended in thin air.
Keep up the good work,
Prieni

Brian, I'm sorry, the Aspirin is on me

Thanks for your comments.
Yes, No. 2 is quite confusing but I like it because of that. Guess it comes back to the Marmite effect with fish-eyes.

In No. 1 I think the fish-eye effect does make the bowsprit look much longer than it is, not sure it would work the same way with a rectilinear lens. But the effect "along the line" would be the same.

In both pics I like how the lines are bulging "the wrong way".

Mannesty: I'm sure you would have figured it out!
Galoot: Go and get one, you know you can't resist for long...

Well, it's still new and so I'm not tired of it. It's fun to try out where it works and where it doesn't. As it happens we have three tall ships in the harbour, just a 10 minute walk away. Good place for a run with the 10-17, as the tall ships are, ehmm, tall!
Two results from yesterdays session:

*istD, Pentax DA 10-17 ED (IF), 1/350 s, A11, ISO 200 @ 10 mm




*istD, Pentax DA 10-17 ED (IF), 1/350 s, A13, ISO 200 @ 10 mm

I got the Sigma 70-300 APO DG a while back. It is sharp enough in my book at 300, although I usually do a CA correction in SilkyPix.
Here's one example that I took out of my bedroom window:
*istD, Sigma 70-300 mm F4-5.6 APO DG Macro, 1/350 s, A11, ISO 200.


I'm sure I have more examples taken at 300 mm but I would need to look that up at home.

Prieni